Basic, yet slightly pricey Flat monitor.
Written: Jul 23 '02 (Updated Jul 23 '02)
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Pros: Flat Screen, Practical for multimedia and basic applications.
Cons: Heavy and Kind of pricey.
The Bottom Line: As Sony's entry level display, it has gone under profound change with the E240.
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| lavoisier's Full Review: Sony STYLEPRO CPD-E240 17 inch CRT Monitor |
At work, when one of my clients came into me and asked about an enquiry about their choices of display for their needs; so I sat down with the client, who needs to use it for their family, personal use with quite a bit of entertainment along with individual work. Plus, he even wanted quality in the monitor as well as a Trinitron tube. So this basically narrows down to just the 17" Sony Trinitron E240, which I find it's perfect for his needs, not too pricey, yet practical.
The display
For a 17" monitor, a 16" viewable area is basically not the largest here, but it's within the standard for most 17" displays. For this viewable area, it is ideal for word processing, some video, and not so professional video applications like video editing or excessive 3D gaming. For gaming, spreadsheets and graphical work, a 19" monitor is suggested.
With a recommended resolution of 1024x768, it isn't really ground breaking or leading edge for a 17" monitor, but it does the job of displaying the images with sufficient clarity. The text was more than sufficiently dark enough for legibility for your reports and office documents. As for the colors, the monitor can stand up really well for photo editing; displaying real life skin tones is not even a problem here. If it can really display real life skin tones, imagine what it could do for your games and DVD experience. All this is really thanks to the FD Trinitron tube. The tube offers a flat display, which aids in the light reflection that could really put a strain on the viewer's eyes. With this flat display since it has a uniformly flat surface, it doesn't force all the reflected light rays to scatter all around, but instead they all will reflect in a similar direction, thereby reducing glare. In any lighting condition, this monitor can stand up pretty well for displaying their colors, combined with a decent video card (preferably not integrated), it's one of the best monitor video card combos. With the grille pitch of 0.25mm, it really does provide a better image than what I expected for the monitor, despite that this is priced as an entry-level flat monitor.
The screen controls are rather not too difficult to use, like some of the upscale monitors would have. But the controls are simply on a stick, which is more than acceptable to me, as I don't really like to push buttons constantly. With a 15-pin video connector, this really tells me that this really is an entry-level display. For an aperture grille monitor it doesn't generate too much heat and it doesn't really seem to be sucking out of my electric bills. But at 48.4 lbs., this monitor is on the heavy side and you don't really want to lift this monitor too much either once you've set it to its proper place.
Unlike its FD Trinitron HMD-A240 cousin, the Sony FD Trinitron CPD-E240 is actually priced lower at $249 compared to $299 for the HMD-A240, plus it offers a 3-year warranty instead of just one from its cousin. Plus, it offers a rather sleeker design than a plain design like its cousin. Plus, it comes in two colors to compliment different case colorings for the computer. Say if I have a Dimension 4400 desktop, I would buy the black monitor, but since I have a white computer a warm gray monitor would compliment my computer case very well, so will my client's.
Conclusion
To finalize, I would like to say that this monitor has really set the standards of having a Trinitron screen, even for the home user. Because of its rather moderate price and high quality to the color that I would expect from the Trinitron TV screen, especially from their WEGA series, I would have no hard time to really recommend this screen at all for those that have some typical computer work like MS Office, along with some entertainment like a DVD. Once you tried it, you won't regret it.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 250
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Epinions.com ID:
lavoisier
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Member: Hugh Jazz
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Reviews written: 180
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